Damon Knight - Orbit 16

Betty came back short of breath, fatter. She seemed to have gained weight everywhere. The loose faded-print dress she now wore didn’t help either, it seemed to touch her body only where it could not avoid it. She felt her hair, which was now dry and brittle. I must look like hell.

“You look like hell,” Jack said.

“You go to hell,” she said, and began to cry.

Jack just stared ahead. Brushing away tears with the back of her hand, she felt a leathery coarseness in her cheeks. I should kill the smug bastard, tie it up in a sloppy little knot. But what if I killed him and still kept coming back here?

“Do you think we can save our relationship?” she said.

“Save it for what?”

“For five and a half percent interest! You ... you would destroy everything that’s beautiful between us.”

“What’s so beautiful between us?”

“Between us, nothing. I only want you should pretend, to take up the time.”

Jack sighed.

“Please don’t do that.”

Jack sighed again.

Betty sighed as long as she could, with some shrillness in her voice.

Jack sighed in sincere despair.

Betty sighed The Carousel Waltz. Look at him, pouting like a kid when somebody’s taken away his toys. I’ll take away his toys. I’ll take away his balls.

“Want to make out?” she asked.

“Bug off.”

“I’ll bestow upon you the ultimate gift.”

“You couldn’t give that away if you took out a want ad under merchandise, used.”

“Prude!”

She tried to control her temper. “What do I look like? In metaphor.”

“Betty, I don’t know. Leave me alone.”

“Tell me.”

“Beauty seen through a shard of Coke bottle that’s been beaten by the sea and aged by the sun.”

“I don’t know what to do with that.”

“Shove it in your glass eye.”

“I don’t have a glass eye.”

“Well, find somewhere else.”

Betty tried to strike an adamant pose, but she could not make her arms work right. Extra flesh slapped against extra flesh. She had trouble fitting her left hand into her right armpit. Only the fingertips of her right hand touched the flabby muscle of her left arm.

“I think we should split,” she said.

“Gladly.”

“Agreed then?”

“A-greed.”

Each sat motionless, waiting for the other lo move.

“Well?” Betty said.

“Well what?”

“In every separation somebody has to go. You!”

“Go? Where’ll I go?”

“Out there.” She waved a hand at the mud-colored door.

“Now wait a minute. One thing I do not do is go out there.”

“Coward!”

“Intimidator!”

“Well, I’m not going. It’s not the girl’s plat e to challenge the unknown.”

Jack stood up, began to pace.

“At your age afraid of dragons!” Betty said sardonically. “Remember when we looked out the door and saw only a hallway with dark at the end? Quite conventional-looking if you ask me, just a quaint drab corridor, nothing to be terrified of. You just walk on down it, all you’ll probably encounter is a minotaur or two.”

“I won’t go. I can’t.”

“Bloodless. Spineless. Shrinking violet. Drooping lily. Chicken. Faint of heart, cold of feet.”

Betty spoke tonelessly, leaving a precise two-second pause after each insult.

“Poltroon. Dastard. Jelly-testicled. Churning-stomached. Trembling-lipped. Scaredy-cat. Shadow-terrified. Pusillanimous. Sissy. Effeminate. Milksop. Lacker of the essential juices. Slacker. Dodger. Abdicator of responsibility. Limp-wristed. Eye-flincher. Pigeon-hearted. Spermless.”

“Are you going to keep this up?”

“Impotent. Weak-kneed. Worry-wart.”

“Stop it, please.”

“Terror-struck. Blench-faced. Bulgy-eyed. Panic-stricken.”

“Okay. Second chance. We’ll try harder.”

“Number two. Cold running blood. Goosefleshed. Tremoring cowerer.”

“Betty!”

“Cold-sweated. Ball-less. Yellow-streaked a mile wide. Duty-shrinker. Quisling. Benedict—”

“All right, I’ll go.”

He opened the door a little way, slipped through the narrow space. The door clicked shut hollowly. She listened to his steps going down the hallway. Tentatively. He seemed to pause near the end. Betty grunted, she expected now to hear him return. When the sound of steps resumed, the footfalls came quickly, resolutely. Their sound diminished gradually until Betty realized that she had imagined the sound of the last few steps. The faint scream seemed to come also from her imagination.

Although she had been alone in the room before, this time she felt stimulated about it. There was that chance that he would not come back. She listened for his footsteps.

He won’t get far. He’ll be like the first one to test the water on the first good swimming day. He’ll test the surface with his toes, let the good chill run up his legs, venture out to knee level maybe, then race back to the beach, heedlessly splashing water behind him. Unless he’s dead or something. Eaten up by the minotaur, bad-breathed by the dragon. Strongest odds are that there’s nothing out there but more of this. He’s probably lost in a maze of hallways. Or maybe he’s outside the cave, foraging for food. He’ll come back a naked ape. A welcome change.

She stretched out on the divan and tried to go to sleep. At first she was disturbed by worries. Maybe something had happened to Jack. What about the scream? If that’s what it was. Too far away to be sure. He probably just saw his own shadow or something.

Gradually she dozed off.

She could not keep track of the number of times she awoke groggily. At these moments she would not allow herself to come to full consciousness, at least not to a consciousness where she might have to reflect upon anything serious. Enough to notice a change of dress and return to sleep. On some awakenings she would look around the room to see if Jack had returned. When she did not see him, she shrugged and resumed the napping position.

Abruptly she was aware of herself lying awake, staring at the faded-lace ceiling. Her body felt stiff. Gripping the back of the divan with both hands, she pulled herself up, muscles straining at the effort. Sharp pains ran between her elbow and wrist.

Reluctantly, she examined herself. She looked like a mountain. Breasts like elongated watermelons, resting on the ample field of her stomach. Thighs like overfilled sacks, so thick she could not make her knees touch. Below them, parts of her body she might never see again. She wore an old lady’s dress, basic brown with miles of grainy lace, fading.

Jack had not returned. Or else he’d come back while she slept, seen her grown fat and lumpy, and had left again.

She let her fingers journey over her face. Trenches and pits, loose coarse skin, eyelids like thin lampshade paper.

I can’t stay in this room anymore. I should never have let him go. Retribution like that takes the juice out of victory. Well, who the hell likes victory juice anyway? I’ll go out there. Anything’ll be better. I’ll step tippy-toe into the mouth of the nearest dragon.

She stood up. Unbearable pain rode up from her calves and thighs. She sat down again. Eyes shut, concentrating, she tried to separate herself from the fat, as if the fat were pasted to her thin body and could be ripped off at any time. She felt it as discrete and alien matter. She inhaled and it rose, pushed up by her breathing. She shifted position on the divan and it moved with her. Silly to get hysterical about it. I should relax. Contemplate my navel. If it is physiologically possible to locate my navel.

Hours later she heard a shuffling sound, somebody walking in the hall. The echo of the steps seemed awesome, threatening. She pictured, in a quick series of flash-card images, hundreds of monsters in a variety running from reconstituted human creatures to the ugliest possible sentient collages. The steps stopped in front of the door. Betty wished she could disappear at will. The doorknob began turning.